November 11, 2010 08:50 PM UTC

Buck Has "No Idea" How He Lost, Except He Does

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• by: Colorado Pols

Defeated GOP Senate candidate Ken Buck sat down yesterday with 9NEWS’ Adam Schrager.

Senate candidate Ken Buck (R-Colorado) says he’s still “scratching his head” and has “no idea” how he lost last week to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado). In his first on-camera interview since Election Day, Buck says the overriding question remains: “Why did the Republican wave go over Colorado?”

…”I don’t blame anybody or anything out there besides myself,” he said in the conversation on Wednesday at the 9NEWS studio. “I think an election’s on the candidate and I could have done better in some areas.”

“Could I have been a better candidate? Sure. Was I a better candidate toward the end than toward the beginning? Sure. But do I have any regrets? Not at all,” he said.

Buck says the polls, both external and internal, showed him leading heading into Election Day. He thinks the Democrats did a better job getting out the vote on Election Day and a great job coordinating their attacks on his campaign all throughout.

“They are very good at coordinating what appears to be an uncoordinated attack,” Buck said about the litany of televised commercials attacking him for a variety of positions that all led to the same conclusion: that he was “too extreme for Colorado.”

As we said in our 2010 Losers post this week, Ken Buck didn’t lose to Michael Bennet as much as he lost to Ken Buck. You can blame rascally Democrats and their sophisticated campaign, but the fact remains that you can’t attack without ammunition–and Buck provided it freely.

Bottom line: Buck answered his own question acknowledging that he could have been a “better candidate,” but if he really doesn’t have any regrets, he has no business ever running for such a high office again. You’re supposed to regret self-inflicted wounds–and learn from them. If Buck can’t do that, he’s not worth the risk and expense of another statewide effort.